We are pleased to share that our director, Dr. Jiang Wu, recently delivered a lecture at The Ho Center for Buddhist Studies, Stanford University on February 6, 2025, and the recording is now available on YouTube.
Watch here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P1r_HYm8hRk
Lecture Title:
"Samuel Beal and the Study of Chinese Buddhism in Victorian England: Reassessing the Contribution of a Forgotten Scholar"
Abstract:
In the formative period of European Buddhology, Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist texts played an important role in shaping a new discourse on Indian Buddhist history through Jean-Pierre Abel-Rémusat’s French translation of Faxian’s 法顯 travelogue (1836) and Stanislas Julien’s translation of Xuanzang’s 玄奘biography (1856). Largely forgotten, however, is the British scholar and chaplain Samuel Beal (1825-1889) who laid the foundation for the research of Chinese Buddhism. Unlike the French scholars who were largely armchair Sinologists with an interest in Chinese Buddhism, Samuel Beal had been to China and Japan during the Second Opium War (Arrow War, 1856-1860) and had first-hand experience with Chinese Buddhism. Appointed professor of Chinese at University College London from 1877 to 1889, he devoted himself exclusively to researching Chinese Buddhism and translating Chinese Buddhist travelogues and scriptures into English. His Catena of Buddhist Scriptures from the Chinese (1872) contains the first translation of many Chinese Buddhist texts popular in late imperial China. He was also instrumental in requesting the Ōbaku Canon 黃檗藏 from Japan through the visit of the Iwakura Mission in 1872 and wrote the first catalog of the received canon before Nanjō Bun'yū 南条文雄 published the second catalog in 1883. In this talk, Jiang Wu will reintroduce Samuel Beal and reassess Beal's contributions to the study of Chinese Buddhism, especially the Chinese Buddhist canon. Wu argues that Samuel Beal’s scholarship remains an important reference point for further research on Chinese Buddhism and Chinese Buddhist texts.